The Keys
by IntenseBurningApathy
Summary: Jesse is in trouble now! His father's keys are nowhere to be found, even in Terabithia. Will he be able to find them without losing something even more valuable along the way?
1. Chapter 1

"Jess! Jess! Where are my keys?"

Jesse Aarons was suddenly awoken by his father's none too gentle prodding. Unaccustomed to being shook awake at this hour, he barely kept himself from yelling at whomever had the nerve to interrupt his first good night of sleep since... well, he was later very glad he held his tongue.

"Wha...?"

"My keys! You never gave 'em back to me!"

Now properly awake, Jesse registered the meaning of his father's words at last. A fleeting moment of concern passed over him, but he ignored it. Surely he had just absentmindedly left the keys in his jeans pocket. He slowly sat up, brushing aside the clutter of discarded drawings and dull pencils that surrounded him on his bed, and stooped down to search through the pockets.

_Oh god. They're not there!_ The look that Jesse gave his father told the whole story.

* * *

"Think!" Jack Aarons' voice had only grown harsher as the morning progressed.

"I-I put the drill down right here! They gotta be... maybe..."

"Dammit, Jess! The keys to the store are all on there! The register, all of 'em! If they have to replace those locks, its six, seven hundred dollars out of my paycheck!" His father was pacing furiously as Jesse fumbled through all of the shelves in the family greenhouse, desperately searching for the small but vital ring of keys.

"They gotta be right around here!"

"If I don't have those keys to open up this weekend..."

"I'll find them, dad, I promise!" Jesse's hollow reassurances were having no effect on his father's temper.

"Why don't you just draw me some damn money to pay for it, how 'bout that? Make yourself useful and draw me some damn money!"

Jesse was well aware of how imperative it was that he find the keys, but he had had enough of his father's criticism.

"I said I'll find them!" He shouted, and then waited for the swift backhand to the face he surely thought his father would give him. It never came.

* * *

"You look awful," Leslie said to Jesse, concern evident in her voice, as they boarded the bus that would take them to their daily dose of torture at school. "What's the matter?"

"I lost the keys to where my dad goes to work, and now... now he has to get new keys made, and locks, and - " Jesse broke off mid-sentence as he noticed the glance Leslie shot at May Belle, who was sitting in front of them.

"May Belle..."

"Please don't anyone get mad at me!"

"What?" Jesse was confused, but a certain amount of frustration built up in him as he realized that his little sister had a hand in this. Leslie intervened to further explain what exactly had happened.

"Hey, Jesse? I... I know where your dad's keys are."

The frustration gone for a moment, Jesse perked up at this statement. "You do?" he asked urgently. Perhaps there was hope after all! Leslie proceeded to explain.

"You know the bells we talked about making? Well, it was meant to be a surprise. All that clanking metal and junk, and... May Belle wanted to help." May Belle nodded enthusiastically at this last statement. Jesse was not so pleased.

"And you _let her_?"

Leslie, somewhat confused herself, had a question of her own.

"May Belle, why did you tell me you found the keys on the ground?"

"They _were_ on the ground!"

"Yeah, on the ground in the greenhouse!" Jesse retorted angrily. "What's the matter with you? Dad's ready to kill me."

"I was waiting for the right time."

Jesse couldn't stay mad at his little sister for long, but she wasn't off the hook just yet. He turned to address Leslie once more.

"So you know where the keys are?" Leslie nodded, indicating in her expression in just what unmentionable place the keys were located.

* * *

In light of the imminent peril Jesse was in on behalf of the missing keys, the school day passed by even slower than normal, something he wasn't entirely sure was possible until now. Before he continued down the road toward the cow pasture, he turned to face May Belle.

"Tell mom I'll be home in a little bit."

"Are you going to tell dad it was me?"

Jesse had softened on the issue of his sister's involvement in the case of the missing keys. "Don't worry, its my job to get dad's keys back," he said as he handed his backpack to her. "See you later."

And with that, Jesse and Leslie embarked upon their most serious adventure in Terabithia yet.

* * *

The duo ran across the cow pasture at breakneck pace, reaching the river that divided the outside world from their kingdom in what they thought must be record time. Something new awaited them there as well.

"Whoa... Look how high it got!" Leslie's mouth was agape at how much the river had swelled since their last visit. Her faith in the enchanted rope's ability to safely ferry them across into Terabithia, however, was unperturbed. "Come on, let's go."

Having crossed the river, Jesse's mind wandered back to his father's harsh words earlier that day. He began speaking aloud without realizing it.

"Get your head out of the clouds, boy, and draw me some money. Make yourself useful and draw me some money."

"What're you going on about?"

"This isn't one of your cartoons, this is serious."

"Jess!"

"I mean, what's so great about being serious all the time anyway? Tell me that."

Just then, they spotted an all too familiar dark shape, an only fleetingly visible silhouette against the endless backdrop of trees. To Leslie, its purpose there was clear.

"What if the Dark Master gets to the keys first?"

I'm not scared of any Dark Master, those are my dad's keys!"

The two of them started off sprinting in the direction of their tree-house castle, fighting off the waves of squogres and hairy vultures that plagued them on their journey.

Not a moment too soon, they arrived at the tree-house. Their adversaries left behind them, temporarily forgotten, Jesse turned his attention back to the task at hand.

"W-where are the keys?" he asked, still out of breath from their harrowing escape.

"Here, open this" Leslie held out her purse to Jesse, who recognized it from church that previous Sunday. He knew where this was going. He gingerly snapped the purse open and... nothing. The light they had both been expecting, the one Leslie had captured, shining through the stained glass window during the service, was nowhere to be seen.

"Jess... Come on, I thought we were past this!"

"Its not me Leslie! My mind is as wide open as it gets, but I don't see a thing!"

"Fine," she said in an exasperated tone. "The keys are hanging from a branch about two-thirds up, right about... oh no!"

"What, what is it?"

"They're gone! But how? I put them right there..."

"_What do you mean they're gone?!_"

"Jess... I'm sorry. All the wind and rain and stuff, it must have knocked the keys down. I'm so sorry..."

"Oh no. No no. No, no, no, NO! They've got to be around here somewhere!" Jesse began desperately sifting through the layers of pine needles littering the ground around their tree-house, looking for any sign of the key ring that was so vital to his family's livelihood. Leslie, now feeling extremely guilty despite having no way of knowing where the keys originally came from, joined him in the search._  
_

* * *

The sun was now beginning to set. Jesse and Leslie had been searching for roughly three hours around the tree house, surrounding forest floor, and even the broken down truck, finding absolutely nothing. A suffocating sense of hopelessness had descended upon them along with a slight drizzle of rain, and they decided to call it a day and return home.

"We'll look again tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that if we have to. Don't worry Jess, we'll find the keys. Trust me." Leslie desperately tried to cheer up her sulking friend, to whom the losing of his father's keys was very much the end of the world.

"Yeah... I guess we will."

"That's the spirit!"

They both realized at the same time that they had reached the Aaron's residence; Leslie's house was just down the street. The drizzle had become a downpour. She turned to head home, calling "See ya!" over her shoulder as had pretty much become customary to them after a long day in Terabithia. However, Jesse thought there was something different about it this time, something he couldn't quite place.

"Yeah, see ya!" But he didn't turn to head to his own house. Rather, he stayed rooted to where he was standing, watching his best friend grow gradually more distant. He found himself suddenly reminded of what his life had been like before she had shown up so unexpectedly, and how much better it had become since she had. He was still scared out of his mind about the prospect of facing his father having not retrieved the keys, but he decided that once this was all over, he would tell Leslie just how much she meant to him. She deserved to know.

* * *

Jesse cautiously approached his house and opened the door slowly, peering around it as if he was attempting to rob the place. His attempts to remain unseen were in vain, however, as his parents were seated at the kitchen table right in front of him, and were staring intently at his face poking through the door.**_  
_**

"I don't suppose you found my keys, did you son?"

Jesse resigned himself to his fate and stepped the rest of the way into the house, closing the door behind him.

"No sir, but I have a pretty good idea where they might be, if I could just -"

"Oh? And where might that be?"

Jesse realized he probably should have considered his statement a bit more. He couldn't tell his father why he thought the keys were in Terabithia, or even what Terabithia was for that matter. Even if he did, he thought ruefully, his father would most likely assume that he was trying to pin the blame for the whole situation on May Belle, something that would only get him deeper in trouble. He stayed silent.

"I thought as much." Jack Aarons had taken his son's silence to mean that he actually didn't have a clue where the keys were. "Luckily I'm not expected at the store until noon, so you have until then to keep searching. If you haven't found them by then, I'll take every penny it costs me out of your hide, you hear me boy?"

"Y-yessir."

Following that brief but terrifying discussion with his father, Jesse ate an indescribably awkward dinner with his family, everyone besides himself wondering why May Belle of all people looked so uncomfortable. He then half-heartedly completed his homework and went to bed, praying that tomorrow would turn out much better than today had.

* * *

"Jess! I called you three times! Its your girlfriend."

Jesse looked up from his drawing to see his sister, smiling mischievously, holding out the phone to him.

"She's not my girlfriend!" Jesse replied crossly, annoyed that his sister still wouldn't let it go that his best friend happened to be a girl. He snatched the phone from her hands.

"Hey," he said casually, expecting to hear Leslie on the other end, anxious to get him out of the house to begin another long day of searching for the missing keys. But the voice he heard did not belong to her, and although he thought it sounded familiar, he was caught entirely off guard.

"Hello, Jess."

"Wait... who is this?"

"I know its a Saturday, but its your teacher, Ms. Edmunds."

Jesse's eyes widened, and he had to make a conscious effort to keep from hyperventilating. It was no secret that he had a huge crush on his young music teacher, and the fact that she might want to talk to him outside of school, for any reason, was baffling to him. More confusing still was the fact that Leslie had come to mind before Ms. Edmunds when May Belle mentioned the word 'girlfriend'.

"I was planning on taking my nephews into the city to the museum, and my sister changed her plans last-minute, so I had a thought..."

Jesse could see where this was going. He would be able to spend a glorious Saturday at the museum with Ms. Edmunds, looking at famous paintings and sculptures the likes of which he had never seen and likely would never see again. He was more than flattered that her first thought for someone to accompany her had been him. He would never be given an opportunity like this again, and he couldn't believe his good fortune.

That's why it pained him so greatly that he would have to tell her no.

"I was thinking maybe you could accompany me to the museum instead. What do you say?"

"Ms. Edmunds, I'm sorry, but I... can't. I, um, well I kinda have a lot of stuff to do today. Don't get me wrong, I - I appreciate your offer, but..."

"Jess, its okay, I believe you. Maybe another time. See you Monday?"

"Yeah... see you Monday. Bye."

As Jesse went to hang up the phone,he looked out the window to see Leslie walking down the road towards his house. He was curious as to how she could simultaneously radiate such happiness and appear to be completely aware of the gravity of the situation. He ran to the door to meet her.

"Hi! Is the king ready to join the hunt for the missing keys?" It was evident that Leslie still had every intention of turning this occasion into another Terabithian quest. Jesse couldn't help but get a little excited himself, despite still being sick to his stomach with the fear that the keys would never turn up.

"Yeah. Let's do it!"

* * *

**AN:**

**Sorry if it's boring. Yes, this first part is taken mostly straight from the movie dialogue. No, I don't claim any rights to the movie or book, its all still the property of Katherine Patterson and Walden Media, yadda yadda. I skipped over the fighting that went on between crossing the river and reaching the tree house because it wasn't pertinent and I couldn't have done it justice anyway. The rest I thought necessary to set the scene for the rest of the story. Hopefully I'm right about that, because it was pretty painstaking to watch that part of the movie again and again and again... I'm a hopeless perfectionist. I'm to be pitied.**

**I just have to share this with you. Somewhere in the story, while I tried to type the word 'perhaps' I goofed up and scrambled the first 4 letters to spell 'herp'. I think my keyboard is trying to tell me something...**


	2. Chapter 2

"Oh my gosh! And I thought it was high the last time!"

Jesse and Leslie had reached the rope swing, but paused upon seeing the aggravated condition of the creek-turned-river. The murky water roared past like a freight train, tearing angrily at the few rocks that could still be seen protruding from its surface. Dangerous was far too tame a word to describe the scene that lay before them.

Both, however, had two good reasons to act artificially brave in the face of this threat. Without question, the keys needed to be retrieved at any cost, but moreover the two of them had something to prove. Ever since Leslie had first gotten Jesse to try the rope swing, he had hedged around the reason for his initial reluctance. Here before him, at last, lay the ultimate chance to prove to himself and to Leslie that the rope held no fear for him whatsoever.

Except, of course, that it still did. It always had. But admitting that would be admitting defeat.

For Leslie's part, she had honestly not been afraid of the rope when she and Jesse had first discovered it. While she was in her story-weaving mode, her mind operated at an abstraction level far above such petty restrictions as fear. However, with the rising water and increasingly precarious appearance of the tree to which the rope was tied, Leslie had begun to understand that Jesse's hesitation was perfectly rational. Whats more, she was beginning to grow wary of the rope herself. However, she was just as prideful as Jesse, and she felt it would be exceedingly hypocritical of her to show any reservations about the rope's safety now.

Leslie was about to utter the procedural "let's go" when she noticed the facial expression Jesse wore. What he had been trying to hide with his nonchalant attitude had been inadvertently betrayed by his wide eyes and slight frown. Slightly guiltily, but not enough to stop her, she seized it as an opportunity to get both of them out of this situation.

"Jess, something wrong?" she asked delicately.

"N-no, nothing, I was just... nothing."

"You don't have to do this if you don't want to, I understand. We can come back later."

Unfortunately for Leslie, Jesse misinterpreted this as a challenge.

"Not even! I ain't scared of any creek, and we only have a few hours to find the keys before my dad goes berserk!"

"Oh, okay," Leslie said in a small voice. "I was just checking was all."

_Rats! Oh well, time to get this over with._

Leslie grabbed hold of the rope, clambered to the top of the fallen log beside her, and threw caution, as well as herself, to the wind.

Jesse seemed to enter bullet-time as he was forced to look on at what happened next.

About two-thirds through the swing, the rope, which unbeknownst to them had been rapidly fraying the whole time, snapped violently, propelling Leslie roughly into the steep bank of the river. Her head cracked audibly against a thick root that was left exposed by the torrential waters, and as she tumbled down the bank and into the river it was clear the blow had rendered her unconscious. Jesse had still yet to process what had just transpired as Leslie quickly sank beneath the surface of the churning river.

"LESLIE!"

* * *

"Jess, honey, you did a good thing today. You may well have saved Leslie's life! You can be proud of that."

Mary Aarons was trying to console her traumatized son by reminding him of the brighter side of the situation that had occurred earlier that day. It wasn't working. Jesse hadn't spoken a word since he had arrived breathlessly at the front door of his house, an unconscious Leslie in his arms, and said simply, "She's hurt." In fact, Mrs. Aarons had no real way of knowing just how right she was about Jesse having saved Leslie's life, as he had yet to tell her any more of the story than she saw with her own eyes. However, even given only what she presently knew, it was a safe bet.

For the time being, Jesse remained huddled in front of the downstairs radiator, hugging his knees and rocking back and forth slowly. Several times Jack Aarons had tried to talk to him, but Mary stopped him each time, fearing that his purpose was one of chastisement, not reassurance. She was right.

"But Mary! The girl got hurt because our boy was foolish enough to go galivanting through those damn woods again, when he should have been looking for my keys no less!"

Jesse had overheard his parents bickering for some time, but this was the first complete sentence he heard emerge from their furtive mumbling, and he didn't like it one bit. He got up suddenly and whipped around to set his father straight.

"She got hurt _because_ we were looking for your stupid keys! They're somewhere in the woods thanks to May Belle's genius idea, and we had to cross the creek to... to get the..." Jesse found himself unable to continue, and he broke down sobbing.

This was the first either of the parents had heard of the creek, both having assumed that Jesse and Leslie had been drenched solely by the rain that had begun falling soon after the accident. Mary took a step forward, hoping to be able to coax more of the story out of the boy.

"Jess, are you saying that Leslie got hurt trying to cross the - "

But Jesse bolted out the door before his mother could even finish the question.

* * *

Jesse paid no heed to where it was exactly he was running, all that mattered was that he kept on running and didn't stop. Outside of art, running was the one thing in his life that never failed to calm him down and clear his head. Before he knew it, he had arrived back at the scene of the crime; what remained of the enchanted rope was dangling from a branch hanging out over the creek, and the water was still gushing rapidly.

Something had changed, however. A tree, one of those whose roots had been uncovered by erosion, had toppled over, neatly bridging the gap across the creek. If only to keep himself moving, Jesse decided to traverse the horizontal truck into Terabithia.

Once on the other side, he continued running, but this time he knew where he was headed: back to the old tree house.

Before long, the familiar structure was in sight. The newly finished roof, the rope ladder (_ROPE?! I'll have to change that later...)_, and the lookout tower were all as he remembered them. Jesse was assailed by all the memories he had of himself and Leslie innocently playing around here, blissfully unaware that their entire kingdom was centered around one giant accident waiting to happen.

Jesse was circling the base of the tree house, no longer preoccupied with finding the keys but with reliving a past that, while only a few days ago, felt like a lifetime. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something glinting in a tree hollow about five feet up from the tree's base. He stopped, stood on his toes, and reached into the hole, instantly recognizing what his hand wrapped around.

The keys.

A squogre must have found them hanging from the tree and -

_Not a squogre, a squirrel! Enough of this nonsense! That's what got you into this mess in the first place!_

He broke down crying once more.

_It can't be! They were right here the whole time! If I hadn't been so stupid yesterday, maybe I could have found them then, and not have had to come back here today..._

Jesse relived the events of earlier that day for what felt like the hundredth time. The rope snapping, Leslie slamming into the bank of the creek and tumbling into the water, himself sliding down the opposite bank and thrashing around in the creek, desperately searching for any sign of her. One thing he hadn't contemplated yet, however, was the conversation they shared immediately before the accident. He thought of it now.

_"You don't have to do this if you don't want to, I understand. We can come back later."_

_"Not even! I ain't scared of no creek!"_

_"Oh, okay. I was just checking was all."_

Jesse finally realized that Leslie had not been trying to get him to show weakness. She had been genuinely concerned. And not only that, she had been subtly trying to tell him that _she_ was nervous. If he felt bad before, he felt absolutely horrible now.

"Its all my fault!" he shouted, but nobody, not even the Terabithians, was there to hear him. Or so he thought.

"Now, son, I don't think that's true."

"Dad...? W-what're you doing here?"

"I figured that'd be obvious. I followed you up here after you freaked out on us at the house."

"But it is true!"

"What?"

"It is my fault! She didn't want to cross and I made her! She's going to hate me now, if she even makes it out of this okay..."

"Look here son. I happen to know for a fact that isn't true. Just before I went looking for you, your mom answered a phone call. It was from Bill Burke, said Leslie was awake and asking for you."

"Really? Can I see her?"

"You bet. In fact, we had better get going right now if we want to get home before dark."

Jesse stood up, and as he did, he was reminded of something in his pocket.

"Hey dad? About the keys - "

"Now don't you worry none about those, son. I'll figure out something. Heck, might even get Bill to pay for 'em, I'll say its payment for you saving his daughter."

"What? No, I _have _the keys!" Jesse handed the all-important key ring over to his surprised father. He nodded curtly as he accepted the keys, but surprised Jesse back by putting his arm around him as they started off back towards the house.

* * *

"Let me see. Leslie Burke... hmm, in with a head injury, right? She's in room 407."

The secretary pointed the Aarons family, or at least the three that had found it worthwhile to visit Leslie at the hospital, towards the aforementioned room. As they proceeded down the hallway, Jesse began to hyperventilate. Jack Aarons once again set to reassuring his son that it would be fine.

"Come on boy, she is _not_ going to hate you. You saved her life, she may well regard you as a hero." Jesse relaxed somewhat.

When they reached the door, Mary stopped to have a word with her son.

"Now Jess, when you go in there, don't be alarmed. Leslie might be hooked up to an oxygen mask or IV drip or something, and it might make things look worse than they are. But we've been assured that she is going to be _fine_. Okay? Alright, go on in."

As Jesse stepped into the room, he had already forgotten what his father had told him a minute before. He tensed, waiting to hear Leslie's voice berating him for being so callous earlier. However, once he got a good look at the hospital bed where she lay, he noticed her eyes were closed.

"Uh, hey, what's wrong with her? Whats going on?"

"It's okay, Jess, she's just asleep. I tried calling you guys again to tell you not to bother coming after all, but I guess you had already left."

Jesse turned to see Bill Burke sitting in a visitor's chair off in the corner of the room, his netbook on the small table beside him. It appeared that he had been working on a story when Jesse arrived. Now relieved of both fear for Leslie's well-being and dread that she would yell at him upon entering, Jesse surveyed the room. It was small and sterile; the only furnishings beside the hospital bed and the table and chair where Bill was sitting were various intimidating medical machines. The small window opposite the door seemed to only let blue-tinted light through, causing the whitewashed room to look quite surreal. Leslie herself was connected to one of the medical devices, most likely a heart rate monitor, and she also had a small nasal oxygen mask on. Beside this and the bandage wrapped around her head, however, she appeared quite normal, peaceful actually.

"So, Jess, since we seem to have a bit of time to kill, I was hoping to ask you about what exactly happened today." Both of Jesse's parents moved closer into the room, curious themselves. "No, Jess, its okay, I'm not blaming you for anything, I just want to know," Bill added hastily after seeing Jesse's expression.

"Well, it all started with the two of us having to find my dad's keys, you see..."

At some point through the story, Leslie woke up. However, seeing the adults listening intently to Jesse about the accident, and not being entirely sure what happened herself, she said nothing. Jesse was the first to notice she was awake, as he gestured towards her having mentioned her in the story. He tensed up once more, entirely unprepared to speak to her for the first time since the accident. He waited for the hateful words to start flowing, for her to tell him how horrible of a person he was for causing all of this.

But she smiled when she saw him. She _smiled_. And just then, Jesse knew everything was going to be alright.

* * *

**AN:**

**Gah, I definitely wrote more in 5 minutes for this story than I did for the entire SAT essay prompt yesterday. BTT is far more interesting than the topic of dissatisfaction through achievement, I suppose. Yeah, that's definitely it. -_-**

**Sorry T.O. Cole, never had anything special planned for the keys, and the light was absent simply because I think the only reason it was there to begin with was that Leslie knew the exact location of the keys. Your comment got me thinking about perhaps making something of it, but alas, I lack the kind of creativity that would take.**

**Oh wow, I totally just realized that it kinda looks like I could end the story right here. But I don't think I will. That being said, if anyone has any good ideas for where this story should go from here, tell me. I could definitely use them.**

**Edit: added a missing sentence or two explaining the keys in the tree hollow. Could've sworn I put them in to begin with, but they were lost along the way somehow.**


End file.
